| Kress&van Leeuwen (1996) put forward “visual grammar” to analyze images whichremarks the beginning of multimodal discourse analysis. On the basis of visual grammar,Royce (2007) put up intersemiotic complementarity which is the development of multimodaldiscourse analysis theories.The present thesis tries to address the following three questions by taking New HorizonCollege English: Viewing, Listening&Speaking as the main materials and analyzing collegeEnglish textbooks based on visual grammar and intersemiotic complementarity:1. Whetherimages in New Horizon College English: Viewing, Listening&Speaking have realized visualgrammar? What are their main features of visual grammar?2. Whether language and imagesin New Horizon College English: Viewing, Listening&Speaking have realized semanticintersemiotic complementarity? What are their main features?Content analysis of images is made at first in New Horizon College English: Viewing,Listening&Speaking. On the basis of which, multimodal discourse analysis is made withdiscussing their features followed.Through discussion of New Horizon College English: Viewing, Listening&Speaking,conclusions can be drawn as follows.1. Images in these textbooks have reached the purpose of making meaning by observingvisual grammar. Their main features are:(1) Narrative representation is adopted as the mainway to realize representational meta-function which is usually used to express how events oractivities happen. The narrative representation is mainly characterized by the reactionalprocess in which the viewers can mobilize related information through the vector that therepresented participant emanates.(2)When realizing interactive meta-functions byestablishing a specific type of relationship between the viewer and the represented participant,the books mainly adopt “contact” and “social distance”. In terms of “contacting”, they mainlyadopt “offer” through which images can better provide related information. For “socialdistance”, they adopt “intimate” distance through which the viewers are involved in therepresented world to reach the aim of providing information.(3)The adoption of “given” and“ideal” information value and salience of “margin” place are the main features ofcompositional meta-function of the images in the textbooks. Clear lines are used in framingdevices to make the distinct separation of language and image.2. Through analysis of language and images in the books, it can be drawn that languageand images have basically realized the semantic intersemiotic complementarity. Their mainfeatures are to adopt “repetition” and “synonymy” as main means to realize thecomplementarity. Occurrence of repetition and synonymous elements, connections are made between language and images thus to co-construe meaning. Nevertheless, a little amount ofmisuse of “antonomy” still exists in the textbooks which fails the purpose of co-construingmeaning of language and image.Through the analysis above, the present thesis put forwards that in multimodal textbooks,designing of images should adapt to the students’ cognitive ability. On the other hand,designing of images is supposed to be based on the main function of textbooks. Textbooksaiming at transferring knowledge ought to adopt conceptual images with the “offer”interactive to co-work with language. In addition, designing of images should well co-operatewith language so that the images can well perform the function of making meaning. |
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